In his novel Crossing Point, James Glickman does two things that have long needed doing. With style and grace, he recovers in fiction the otherwise invisible role African Americans played during the American war for independence. And he allows us to visualize, more palpably and poignantly than the documentary record usually permits, the sustained suffering required to achieve a desperate and highly problematic victory.

— Joseph J. Ellis, author of Founding Brothers and most recently The Quartet

Crossing Point

by james glickman

Based closely on the known historical record, Crossing Point brings to life the American Revolution in all of its bloody detail.

When the Revolutionary War begins, Guy Watson is a slave to the Hazzard family in Rhode Island, but he is soon engaged in service for the American army by Samuel Ward, head of one New England's most prominent families. Torn about leaving his beloved June and the other slaves that have become his family, Guy eventually sets out with Samuel Ward and a battalion of men on a treacherous, and legendary, trek to Quebec.

The two men experience the inevitable toll the brutality of war takes, and it changes them forever. Upon their eventual return home, they come to realize the cost of war not just for those in battle, but also for those who stayed. Crossing Point vividly shares a little-known chapter in the national founding, and raises the question of what justice was fought for by the men who faced an uncertain freedom when the last shots were fired.

I was quite won over by the skill with which Glickman humanizes the abstractions of military history—the relations of officers and men, rebels and loyalists, blacks and whites, slaves and masters, and make the incredible horrors of war credible.

— C. Vann Woodward, editor of The Oxford History of the United States

James Glickman is a gifted writer, and he makes the American war for independence credible—physically and emotionally real. I don’t think many of us know this war as well as we think, especially the story of black participation. I recommend this book for anyone who wants to come closer to the wellsprings of the American story, our conflicted and fiery origins.

— Jay Parini, author of The Last Station and The Passages of H.M.

Set in slave-holding Rhode Island with its African echoes, Crossing Point brilliantly recreates the lives of slave and master in the early years of the American Revolution. Glickman brings this period to life with all its suffering and sobering complexity.

— Eugenia W. Herbert, author of The Private Franklin and Twilight on the Zambezi

With the sure hand of an accomplished author, James Glickman gives us a profoundly moving tale of the American Revolution populated by leading luminaries as well as the enslaved. This is historical fiction at its best, an edifying and enjoyable read for the lay reader and the specialist. The history is impeccable and the story truly riveting.

— Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave's Cause

James Glickman attended Yale University and the Iowa Writer's Workshop. His fiction and nonfiction writings have been published in The Boston Globe, Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, Berfrois, and many others. His first novel Sounding The Waters came out in 1996 to wide acclaim. Crossing Point is his second novel. He lives in Massachusetts.